As a lifelong Democratic voter, I’m dismayed by the radical left’s ever-growing list of dos and don’ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy. There are many people who see these frenzies about cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and safe spaces as overtly crazy. The shrill tyranny of the left helps to push them toward Donald Trump.

Ironically, only fellow liberals will be cowed by terror of being branded a racist (a pejorative lobbed at me in recent days — one that, however groundless, tends to stick). But there’s still such a thing as a real bigot, and a real misogynist. In obsessing over micro-aggressions like the sin of uttering the commonplace Americanism “you guys” to mean “you all,” activists persecute fellow travelers who already care about equal rights.

Moreover, people who would hamper free speech always assume that they’re designing a world in which only their enemies will have to shut up. But free speech is fragile. Left-wing activists are just as dependent on permission to speak their minds as their detractors.

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.

I understand her desire to stand back and let the left-wing crazies eat each other alive, but I hope Shriver doesn’t. That’s because if these berserkers are to be defeated, we need old-fashioned liberals like her to take a stand against them. As Shriver rightly point out, defending the right of all people say what’s on their minds is a matter of self-defense.

When I read the line claiming that “the shrill tyranny of the left” helps push ordinary people to Donald Trump, I reflected on this week’s Milo Yiannopoulos appearance at LSU in Baton Rouge. I fell ill at the last minute and wasn’t able to go, but my desire to show up had nothing to do with wanting to hear what the clownish provocateur had to say. It was entirely to stand in symbolic support of his right to be on campus saying it. Members of the campus ideological uniformity diversity community tried to stop him from showing up, and reportedly were able to enlist a high-ranking college administrator — the Chief Diversity Officer — in their efforts. Happily, they failed to achieve their goal. Again, I say “happily” not because I endorse Milo’s shtick, but because I strongly endorse his right to perform it, and the students’ right to watch the spectacle. And because the same grounds that the Social Justice Warriors at LSU used to try to silence Milo — that his speech would be hurtful to them — could be used to silence political conservatives and religious conservatives.

And not just conservatives. After all, if their Australian counterparts managed to intimidate the organizers of a literary festival into hastily arranged programming to counter the benign address of a novelist asserting the right of novelists to write about people and topics of their choosing, they’ll also go after liberals. If extremism in the defense of anti-racism, anti-homophobia, etc., is no vice, then there is no limit to what these moralistic Jacobins will do. It is up to principled liberals to join the fight against them.

About the SJWs driving people to vote for Trump, I can easily see why. I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton is a Social Justice Warrior. But I do believe that she will not do anything meaningful to speak out against them. There will be no Sister Souljah moments in her campaign. And because noxious identity politics has a much greater hold among liberal elites than it has in the past, it’s reasonable to assume that a Hillary Clinton administration will fill the federal bureaucracy with people who intend to advance the SJW goals, or who at least lack the principled courage to stand against their march through the institutions. How can anybody look at how college administrators capitulated to them last fall and believe otherwise?

It is appalling to consider that the First Amendment would likely fare better under a Donald Trump presidency than a Hillary Clinton one, but I believe it’s the truth. I hope in Monday’s debate, someone asks both candidates about it.

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74 Responses to Free Speechers For Trump

You don’t actually explain why Trump would be better for free speech, I should point out. You think that leftists and liberals will stamp on free speech, and that Clinton won’t stop them. Fair. You suggest that Trump might. Fair. But that says nothing about his overall impact on free speech, only on one aspect of it – and like it or not, liberals getting pissy over crude language and religious beliefs *aren’t the sole or even necessarily the greatest threat to free speech.*

Now, you could make that case! And I’d be open to hearing it. But you don’t. You don’t explain why altering libel laws and attacking the press is less dangerous than leftist thought policing. You’ve in fact never explained it. And in fairness, you haven’t had to – you’re highlighting one particular wrong, and it doesn’t have to be the greatest wrong to be worth addressing. But if you’re going to claim that it is, you had damn well better back it up – especially in a post that purports to explain “why” this is the case.

I do not think that libel laws, even severe ones, allowing individuals to sue media outlets for wanton lies or reckless defamation are in the least contrary to to the First Amendment – at least, as understood by its framers (who would happily have suppressed pornography as well), as opposed to judges of the past 50 years, with their penchant for legislating de Banco.

One thing I really take issue with in the post is you say you don’t believe Hillary Clinton is a Social Justice Warrior. This is coming on the heels of her implying Trump is some sort of klansman in one of her commercials and her sweeping “deplorables” comment about Trump supporters–that they are racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and so forth (all at once too!). In the speech controversy surrounding Lionel Shriver, I have little doubt Clinton would side with SJWs who literally are out to get her and compare her among other things to people practicing genocide. Clinton, as a student of Saul Alinsky, I think would join the SJW bandwagon quite readily, and, at the very least, I don’t see her having the courage to stand against a SJW mob for quaint notions of free speech.

It’s worth noting that libel law is a matter of state law, not federal. Trump can talk about opening up libel laws all he wants, but there are no federal libels laws to open up, as far as I know.

This can be read in two ways — either as a sign of his ignorance (true) or as a sign of the limited degree to which a President Trump could actually make a difference to American law on this issue (also true).

“Ironically, only fellow liberals will be cowed by terror of being branded a racist (a pejorative lobbed at me in recent days — one that, however groundless, tends to stick). But there’s still such a thing as a real bigot, and a real misogynist.”

And as “a lifelong Democratic voter” Shriver was no doubt silent when the racist pejorative was used against conservatives, Republicans, Evangelicals and anyone else not on her team. I’m also reasonably certain that she was silent whenever the pejorative misogynist was applied to pro-lifers or anyone else who differed with the Democrat party’s role in forcing religious groups to provide contraception coverage in health insurance policies.

“But there’s still such a thing as a real bigot, and a real misogynist.” And she would love to retain these descriptions for anyone who disagrees with her – but now she finds it outrageous that she is stuck with being branded a racist. Life is so unfair when the SJWs turn on their masters after running out of Hitlers on the Right.

I grant her zero brownie points. She has not seen the light. She just wants to go back to the good old days when lifelong Democrats like her could never be accused of groundless accusations of being racist.

Somehow this post seems like beating a dead horse one too many times. When Lionel Shriver gave her speech, and the liberals who fancy themselves sanitized Maoists had a hissy fit, it was worth talking about — once. Now we’re just going to rehash and rehash and rehash. Not worth the trouble.

[NFR: Yet you still troubled yourself to write four sentences commenting on it. — RD]

Rest easy. If you go to Milo’s website you will find that he is speaking at very many universities. The fringe does protest, sometimes disruptively, but the invites and presentations continue.

An honest look at Milo’s speaking schedule should help put to rest that idea that universities are in the hands of the fringe – now matter how much some like to promote the idea the fringe activities as a new norm.

Dreher takes a big step from the current pedagogical fad of coddling teenagers who are just learning how to think, to actually endangering to the first amendment. I agree that Hillary is unlikely to speak out against social justice worrying on college campuses, and will no doubt tepidly laud safe spaces and their accompanying detritus in her future campus speeches so long as her research team tells her to. That’s to her detriment and I’m with Dreher up to there. But the logical leap I’m stuck at is how her failure to admonish SJW’s somehow entails more harm to the first amendment than Trump’s many calls to specific and harmful actions that have been detailed by other commenters.

While the safe space and trigger warning creep on college campuses is silly and troubling, and arguments against such illiberalism continue to be a worthy time investment, isn’t this primarily a pedagogical issue rather than a free speech issue? Private schools can enforce whatever rules they want, and I can take my money elsewhere. Public funding complicates the issue but Dreher doesn’t go in that direction. The shaming and self-censorship that Shriver calls out against is in the private sphere. Is there a push for police-enforced safe spaces in the general public (not schools) that I’m somehow overlooking? If Hillary is calling for laws that ban certain ‘traumatic’ speech under penalty of fines or arrest then I will stand corrected. Otherwise, I remain puzzled on how the latest far-left quixotica in the pursuit of better learning environments for young people is in any way comparable to Trump’s world, characterized by FCC fines for speaking “lies” and a media that writes under siege of libel suits.

The much sharper threat to the first amendment from a Hillary presidency is the risk of overturning Citizens United, which is a risk universal to most democrats and not specific to Hillary. I don’t think Roberts will let it happen, and even if it somehow did get overturned in the worst-case scenario, a return to regulated campaign speech would still be preferable to the first amendment butchery Trump has repeatedly called for.

Of course, Trump has no power to tighten libel laws, whether they’re state or federal. The point is he promises campaign audiences he’s going to do it, just as he tells them he’s going to do a whole range of things presidents can’t do. The thing is he would if he could. That’s where his mind is, and he can fill not only the seats of Supreme Court justices, but federal judgeships and his entire administration with people who do his bidding, just as Trump the businessman hires only people who won’t “cross” him.

Just as he admitted to Paul Ryan that he’s only saying what people want to hear about protecting their Social Security, he’s very likely telling gullible socons he’s going to give them the justices they want who’ll vote their way on abortion (note how he steers clear of similar promises re gay marriage) when the truth is his real criteria are who’s most likely to do his bidding on corporate and trade matters that will benefit Trump business dealings now and in the future. In these and every other appointment, his priorities can only be what they’ve always been in every other kind of dealing, namely, what’s in it for Trump and Trump interests. He doesn’t know how to do things any other way.

But what else can Christians expect from a professed ally who claims a motto like “You can never be too greedy” and advises “When people wrong you, go after those people, because it is a good feeling and because other people will see you do it; I always get even”?
Or who — speaking of religious liberty — promises to “make Christianity Number One again.”

Or — speaking of church, state and religious liberty issues — who told Evangelicals that their and his (as a “true believer”) problem is “we’re getting less powerful in terms of religion and in terms of force.” Elect him, and “Christianity will have power again.” If you believe all his promises, he’s also got some prime real estate opening up in Russia he can sell you.

Correction: Oh, for that edit function! I had meant to delete that sentence in my last comment about Trump making Christianity “number one” again. The correct quote was in the last paragraph. He promised Evangelicals that the problem is Christians have lost power in terms of “force” (which means what?), and that if he’s elected, “Christianity will have power.”

I’m a more old-fashioned liberal, I’m about the same age as Rod, and I find contemporary left-wing intolerance destructive and deplorable. And I think Rod is right that Hillary, as a candidate or president, will not confront the intolerance on her left (though, to be fair, I don’t think Trump will ever confront the malice on his right). For what it’s worth, I’m taking a stand against that intolerance, in the limited ways that I can. The left-wing witch-hunt has gone on long enough, and it’s up to reasonable, fair-minded liberals to help put an end to it. The alternative is to accept the growing polarization that drives both ends farther toward the extremes and brings us closer and closer to national disaster.

[NFR: I think you’re correct that Trump will not stand up to the same thing on the Right, and that is one reason I do not like him. On the other hand, the power differential between Left and Right on these issues is enormous. Trump may not stand up to them, but everybody else will — and if everybody else doesn’t, so what? Alt-right racists are still fringe. The SJWs of the Left, though, are very well represented in academia, media, law, and Democratic politics, either they themselves, or through fellow travelers like Hillary Clinton. — RD]

@Thomas Kaempfen I read your blog post. There are many points I agree with, but regarding Trump confronting the alleged malice on the right, what “malice” are you talking about and what exactly are you looking for Trump to do? Your own blog post makes the case that organized racism (eg the Klan) and holding clear racist views are on the outs, and what we generally mean by “racism” today is really more associated with the less clear idea of racial animus (which you claim Trump exploits). I personally think the media ritual has gotten silly but Trump has denounced David Duke many dozens of times at this point. He also has been actively trying to court African Americans and Hispanic voters. He says he will win 95% of the black vote in four years if he wins. That is no doubt part Trumpian boast, but I do think it also indicates a sincere sentiment to help the black community. Trump immigration policy at this point is no different than Barrack Obama, and he has frankly left the door open to a future legalization of some kind. The socalled Muslim ban has been revised to “extreme vetting” while Clinton is talking “tough vetting”. He also has this diversity committee which includes all the minority groups which he started when he first entered the race and he does seem to be responsive to it.

“For what it’s worth, I’m taking a stand against that intolerance, in the limited ways that I can. The left-wing witch-hunt has gone on long enough, and it’s up to reasonable, fair-minded liberals to help put an end to it. ”

The current situation is so dysfunctional, in so many ways. Rod is right to say that intolerant SJW attitudes are increasing in influence among liberals, especially younger ones. And Trump is doing his best to stir up racial animosity on the right (sorry commenter George, but it’s true), just as conservative agitators (e.g. Rush) have been doing for years. And the two sides are growing more and more alienated and angry towards each other. It’s terribly destructive.

But despite all that, I see the bare beginnings of a change in attitude in certain liberal circles. There’s been a definite awakening in interest about the troubles of the white working class, as evidenced by the great interest in J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy (which I’m in the process of reading). One of the few constructive things to come out of the Trump candidacy is that it’s focused attention on those troubles. And lately there’s been a stronger push-back against P.C. by certain leftish writers, notably Jonathan Chait and Freddie deBoer.

It all adds up to a growing recognition that crusading liberal intolerance is – by alienating potential allies and excluding huge sections of the American people – hindering the very goals it wants to achieve. And that intolerance, in conjunction with conservative anger and resentment, is utterly undermining the national unity that would make any real progress possible. There’s something in the air, and there is the smallest chance that something good might come of it.

As I think I’ve said here before, free speech as classically envisioned by defenders of the 1st Amendment is an impossibility. Every society has its ruling class, and every ruling class has things which it holds sacred and unquestionable, and speech against those things is always forbidden, always punished, whether its called “blasphemy” or called “hate speech”. When people fail to defend their sacred things, and punish taboo speech, it merely opens the space for someone else to enforce their view of the sacred. As Mr. Dreher quoted in another post, “Wherever orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.” If the Right, in the name of “free speech”, fails to punish blasphemy, then the Left will punish what they consider blasphemous instead. There is always an “official religion”; the only question is whose.

One area not directly controlled by the First Amendment, but a related concept, is access to information regarding the government. Indeed, the First Amendment itself provides qualified access to certain court records and proceedings. In that regard, we should look at Clinton’s efforts to put her official emails (government records) on her private email server — effectively out of reach of FOIA. This is hardly a problem limited to Clinton, and politicians at every level from local, state and federal are doing official email on their private gmail, yahoo, etc. accounts. Would Trump be any better? Hard to imagine.